This invention relates to a special welding apparatus, particularly a welding shield with a movable goggle. The colored goggle can be moved to cover and uncover the transparent goggle window.
In modern industry, a product should have not only a better quality, but also a lower cost and price. In order to achieve the aforesaid goal, a better apparatus or tool is essential to the modern industry, i.e., a tool should be practical, durable, of precision, and should have more functions so as to lower the cost, to protect the user, and to increase the working efficiency.
A welding process is often required in many aspects in modern industry. The welding quality and efficiency are directly impacting on the manufacturing costs. In electric welding, most is done manually and it is certainly believed that the manual welding operation will continue to be used in the respective industries owing to many reasons, such as some parts having irregular specifications, the factories or working sites having different facilities and scales. In other words, a full automatic welding operation can not be adopted in all factories. Therefore, there exists the need to develop a welder's safety, to lower the cost and to enhance the quality of welded products, and to elevate the welding efficiency.
The existing electric welding head shields may be classified into two kinds: the hand-held type and the headmounted type. The latter type is further classified into three classes: a fixed colored goggle, a movable colored goggle type (i.e., the colored goggle on the window can be covered and uncovered), and a type with helmet. When using the head-mounted type of head shield to fall down from the top portion so as to position the window in front of the eyes for protection purposes. The welder will have a free hand to hold the work piece; therefore, the head-mounted type of shield can, under certain circumstances, increase the working efficiency, and it is used by many factories and welders in the developed countries.
According to the welding experiences, an intense welding arc and a toxic smoke may be simultaneously generated during a welding operation. Most of the conventional head shields are designed with a conic monopod shape, from which the smoke--once it entered--is not easily exhausted. Consequently, at the face of the welder there will accumulate a lot of smoke, which would cause some occupational diseases, such as bronchitis, pink eye, and respiratory ailments. The welder is susceptible to suffer from such diseases when working at a place that has a poor ventilation system. Moreover, if the welder does not wear a normal helmet, the situation may become worse. If the welder is required to wear a helmet during a welding operation, a regular and professional helmet has to be used. A helmet is usually called a melon rind type of helmet by welders; a helmet without visor should not be used because it is unable to protect the welder's ears and nose in case some harmful stuffs strike him on the head.
When using a hand-held type of head shield, the welder would have difficulties in holding the work piece with one hand, while his other hand is used to make spot welding. Usually, the welder closes his eyes to prevent the intense welding arc from radiating into his eyes, but his face gets exposed to the intense welding arc. Experience has proved that the welder after long time exposing to such intense welding arc would suffer from dry skin, swollen skin around the eyes, peeling skin, eye diseases, or skin cancer. One might say that there are still many welders working in the conventional manner without suffering any aforesaid diseases; in fact, they are either not aware of the danger due to lack of knowledge, or having no choice.
The following is a real example for reference. There is a factory located in a certain processing zone in Taichung area, which is specialized in doing mechanical body work for their customers. One day a department of the factory accepted an order to make a lathe scrap tank. The material for the tank was a steel sheet of 1 mm thick. After being measured and cut, the steel sheet was bent into the required form; them, the side board and pipe joints thereof were added. Since it was a small order with irregular specifications and lower processing price, there was no particular working clamps being designed or made; further, the welders of that factory were used to conduct welding with the hand-held type of head shields (in fact, most of the welders in Taiwan use that kind of head shield). To make the scrap tank as mentioned above, the various parts thereof had to be assembled together in position first by means of spot welding; then, a regular leak-proof welding was conducted, followed by finishing and hole-drilling processes. During the spot welding process, one hand of the welder had to hold the welding pliers, whereas the other hand held the work piece; therefore, the experienced welder closed his eyes to do the welding work. As a result of the radiation of the intense welding arc, it was discovered by the inventor that all of the welders from that factory suffered from serious peeling skin; some of them even needed to see a doctor for their swollen eye skin. Some of then might have suffered from skin cancer. Many of the similar aforementioned cases were discovered by the inventor during his working travelling, but it can not be fully described herein because of limited pages.
Nowadays, efficiency is the main issue in our daily lives. Naturally, the welding business is under serious competition; welders seem to have less or no time to pre-fix the work piece before putting on the head shield and starting to weld the work piece. One might ask why welders do not use the head-mounted type of shields to avoid the aforesaid injuries. In real work sites, welders usually do many things one after another, such as handling the materials, welding, moving articles from one place to another, or climbing up and down around a big mechanical structure. In that case, the head shields often slide down to block the vision of wearers. Welder may put on or remove the head shields as the case may be, but they may feel inconvenient to them in terms of work efficiency. In fact, the conventional head-mounted type of head shields is not quite good to use.
Another instance was personally seen by the inventor while he was in San Francisco. The inventor once worked in a shipyard as a welder. According to the regulations of the insurance company, every worker working in a ship must wear a helmet which was a special type of helmet with no visor, and the American welders called it a melon-rind type of helmet. One day, the inventor saw a piece of wood strike a worker on one of his ears, who was seriously injured; that worker was a welder working on a hanging scaffold. The inventor believed that the head shield of that special type of helmet was not a good one. If it is tightly worn on the head, the wearer would have a headache. If it is loosely worn on the head, the window does not usually fall in its correct position after the head shield is pulled down; further, the head shield fallen down often swings laterally. The inventor also inquired the point of views of the American welders on that type of helmet; they all agreed with my opinion. Consequently, the inventor brought a hand-held type of head shield to the work site to use it as a helmet with visor. The inventor had to hold the work piece with one hand and the welding pliers with the other hand. In that case, the inventor had to close his eyes to perform the welding operation. After working for one day, he had a seriously dry feeling on his face, and had seriously swollen skin around his eyes the next morning; then his skin peeled off after several days. The insurance company said no damages could be claimed because the insurant did not follow the regulations to wear a head shield.
Summarizing the aforsaid facts, it is evident that the current two types of head shields all have their own drawbacks. The inventor has over 20 years of welding experiences; during that period, no one has paid attention to these drawbacks. Since the inventor is also a businessman, and has understood that the manufacturing cost and the quality of a product would directly relate to the success of an enterprise. If an enterprise is provided with the best tools, it would be instrumental to its success.